Running head: DEFINITIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY: APA AND APS HEADINGS

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1 APA and APS Headings 1 Running head: DEFINITIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY: APA AND APS HEADINGS Competing Definitions of Psychology: APA and APS Convention Subject Headings Compared Edward P. Kardas Southern Arkansas University Magnolia, AR

2 APA and APS Headings 2 In 1999 I was asked by then SWPA president, Theresa Wozencraft, to serve as program chair. While I was mulling over her request, president-elect Randall Wight independently asked me to serve in the same position for his presidential year. The writing was on the wall, it seemed, and acceded to both of their requests. Little did I know then that I would serve as SWPA s program chair until 2004, when I was elected SWPA president and was not permitted to hold both jobs (not that I wanted to!). I had absolutely no idea what the job of program chair was when I first began. Throughout that first year I was surprised numerous times by the demands of the job. Gradually, I learned that the job had many facets and included soliciting proposals, recruiting referees, coordinating with the convention manager and the convention hotel, informing members about their proposals, preparing the program, getting it to the printer, and much more. Back then, of course, most everything was done by hand and by postal mail although the program itself was prepared using a word processor and was sent to the printer via a floppy disk. One of my motivations for taking the position of program chair was to computerize the process. Eventually that happened. However, it took several years to implement all of the necessary elements and, in the end, was only accomplished by only allowing the electronic submission of proposals. In this paper, the focus will be on a small portion of that much larger effort, namely how SWPA defined its topics for proposals before 1999, after, and now; how APA and APS currently define their topics for proposals; how the PsycINFO database is organized, and, finally, what all of these lists reveal about the definition of psychology today.

3 APA and APS Headings 3 Defining Psychology One way to define psychology is to look at all of the parts that constitute it. Fortunately, others have already done much of that work. The American Psychological Association (APA) and the Association for Psychological Science (APS) have categorized the parts of psychology, albeit in differing ways. In addition, PsycINFO has also categorized its database topically. The APA uses a list of 71 top-level terms to help authors classify the work they submit to the annual convention. Table 1.3 shows that list in its current form. Note that the list is organized alphabetically, not topically or historically. My goal in this paper is to take APA s list, along with APS s list, and PsycINFO s topics and put together a picture of the subdisciplines that make up 21 st Century psychology Insert Table 1.3 about here Like the APA, APS too has a list of terms designed for authors submitting work to their annual convention. The APS list has 73 top-level terms, but only 39 of those terms are shared with the APA list. Table 1.4 shows the APS list and Table 1.5 shows the terms shared by both lists Insert Table 1.4 and Table 1.5 about here Finally, PsycINFO s Content Classification Code System is a listing of 22 top-level terms used to describe the contents of their database. Table 1.6 shows those terms Insert Table 1.6 about here

4 APA and APS Headings 4 By themselves, these lists are fairly meaningless. However, when carefully analyzed and compared a picture of the many parts of 21 st Century psychology emerges. Let s start with the lists from APA and APS. The 39 topics in common provide a starting point for seeing the many subdisciplines that make up the picture of 21 st century psychology. The picture becomes clearer after adding the topics unique to the APA and APS lists. After comparing the developing picture to the PsycINFO s Content Classification list, 1 more unique subdiscipline was added, intelligent systems. Method I obtained the lists used to classify convention submissions from APA and APS. The APA list (see Table 1.3) had 71 top-level entries and the APS list (see Table 1.4) had 73 entries. I then searched for sufficiently similar topics on both lists and found 39 that were on both lists (see Table 1.5). After, I arbitrarily created six categories: developmental, scientific psychology, applied psychology, social, cognitive, and gender to serve as higher-order labels. (Others, of course, could propose different categories.) Using my categories, I then created a graphic display (see the Appendix) showing which topics were common to APA and APS and which were unique to either organization. Later, I examined PsycINFO s content classification code system to see if it included any topics not found on either APA s or APS s lists. I discovered one, intelligent systems, and included it on my graphic display. Finally, I compared my results to SWPA s pre convention topic list and to their current list.

5 APA and APS Headings 5 Results The Appendix shows the picture that emerged. Comparing the two lists from APA and APS yielded 62 subdisplines, 39 of those were common to both lists, 17 were exclusive to the APA list, and 5 were exclusive to the APS list. One more subdiscipline was added from PsycINFO. In the Appendix I divided those 62 subdisciplines into five higher-level groups: developmental, scientific psychology, applied psychology, cognitive, social, and gender. Immediately obvious is how much of psychology is devoted to applied science. The applied area of psychology included a total of 23 subdisciplines. Clinicians, counselors, therapists, schools, businesses, the military, police, community developers, and athletes all look to psychology for specific answers to problems in their respective areas. The next largest group was social psychology with 14 subdisciplines revealing the social nature of psychology. Humans are social beings who live in groups and group living imposes social structures and demands. For example, the frictions imposed by group living increase in multicultural societies composed of people with different ethnic backgrounds or religions. Daily, news reports from around the world tell of strife and conflict in places where ethnicity or religion differ. The late Samuel Huntington (1996) identified eight civilizations or large groups that were similar ethnically or religiously: Western (USA & Europe), Latin American, Islamic, African, Orthodox, Hindu, Japanese, and Sinic (China, Korea, & Viet Nam). He argued that human conflicts and wars were more likely along the fault lines where those civilizations met. Cognitive psychology followed with 10 subdisciplines. Questions about the mind and its workings are ancient. Psychology s borders with philosophy and biology are fertile ground for such questions.

6 APA and APS Headings 6 Philosophers have long wondered about the nature of the mind and its organization while biologists have looked for the mind s underlying mechanisms. Next came scientific psychology with eight subdisciplines. Scientific psychology is mostly concerned with issues of measurement, data collection, replication, and theory construction. Scientific psychologists discover and document new facts about psychology in both humans and other animals. They work on the edge between the known and the unknown. Developmental psychology included four subdisciplines. Developmental psychologists explore the dynamic nature of human and animal lifespans. They also investigate processes such as aging, maturation, and death itself. Finally, the division of humankind into two genders created another natural division, gender, for study that includes three subdisciplines. While men and women are both members of the same species, the requirements imposed by their reproductive mechanisms spill over into psychology and cause vast social and cognitive differences between them. The APA and APS Unique Items The APA list contributes an additional 17 topics. Eight of those items deal directly with interventions, or solving problems: child abuse, AIDS, depression and suicide, stress, rehabilitation, disasters, environment, violence and aggression. It s not a pretty picture; unfortunately it represents much about the realities of living in the 21 st century. The APS list adds another five topics. Two of those topics, behavioral genetics and epidemiology lie along the border with biology. Interestingly, the APS topic, self, is the only one to fall in the area of humanistic psychology. One more topic came from the PsycINFO Content Classification list. It was, intelligent systems, which borders computer

7 APA and APS Headings 7 science. Taken together, the subdisciplines shown in Table 1.7 form a convenient way of looking at psychology s parts in the 21 st century. SWPA Convention Lists When I became program chair, I inherited a list of 18 topics (see Table 1.2). No one I asked seemed to know how those topics had been picked or who had done so. When I compared that list to the Appendix I found that 16 of them were on the list of topics common to APA and APS. The other two, personality and teaching (of psychology) were on the list of APA-only topics. Of the 32 topics (see Table 1.1) listed by SWPA starting in 2009, 9 were not on the pre-1998 list. The majority of them fell into the applied psychology column and on the list of topics common to APA and APS, those were: human factors, community, sport, and crime and delinquency. The other 2 were listed as APA-only topics: (major)depression and suicide, and stress. In addition, 14 topics were common to both SWPA lists. Between 1998 and 2008, SWPA used the APA list to classify its topics. Discussion Of course, there is much more involved in defining psychology than listing and analyzing its many subdisciplines. Somehow, each of those subdisciplines must relate to the subject matter of psychology itself in a clear and recognizable manner. There must be some phenomena that are clearly and obviously psychological. Once again, someone else has already taken the time and effort to put together such a list (available at

8 APA and APS Headings 8 The highest-level topics on that list are: o Mental Competency o Mental Health o Mental Processes o Parapsychology o Personal Autonomy o Psycholinguistics o Psychological Theory o Applied Psychology o Psychomotor Performance o Psychophysiology o Religion and Psychology o Resilience The first two items relate to the phenomena of normal vs. psychopathological behavior and are clearly psychological. The next heading, mental processes, includes a large number of phenomena including awareness, learning, memory, and problem solving. Parapsychology includes claims about near death experiences, out of body experiences, precognition, and UFO sightings. Parapsychology is a set of hotly disputed psychological phenomena and most likely no amount of discouragement by scientists will reduce the frequency of parapsychological claims. Hynan (2007) provides methodological guidelines for evaluating such claims and suggests that no one method is likely to be suitable. Personal autonomy relates to living independently of others. Most children, of course, eventually live autonomously while some adults lose autonomy through a variety of means (e.g., accidents or dementia). Psycholinguistics includes neurolinguistic programming (like parapsychology, neurolinguistic programming is controversial) and

9 APA and APS Headings 9 the semantic differential, a method for rating attitudes. The next item, applied psychology includes phenomena such as: lie detection, underachievement, absenteeism, and job satisfaction. People look to psychologists to solve these and many other real world problems. The next category, psychomotor performance includes motor skills and task performance. Psychophysiology contains a great many psychological phenomena. They range from consciousness, sensory capacities, and sleep. Another of psychology s early interests was the psychology of religion. Nelson (2006) documents the history of the relationship of science (including psychology) and religion and recommends a return to a broader conception of science so that both psychology and religion can be examined from more similar points of view. The last item, resilience, refers to how individuals differ in their responses to the same situation or stimulus. One example is mental toughness. Crust (2008) reviewed previous research on that phenomenon and concluded that more research is needed in order to better define it. We all believe we know what makes a topic psychological. We may differ over what specific topics to include within our definition of psychology. Here, I believe, is where the analysis of APA and APS convention topics helps the most. Many of the APAonly topics seem to relate to things requiring intervention: child abuse, AIDS, depression and suicide, stress, rehabilitation, disasters, environment, and violence. The APS-only items are more eclectic. Some relate to biological topics: behavior genetics and epidemiology. The remainder are hard to classify within a single category: performance, self, and couples. Undoubtedly, psychologists will continue to create lists like these and, in some way, analyzing those lists will reveal much about what the authors consider to be the proper subject matter for the discipline.

10 APA and APS Headings 10 References Crust, L. (2008). A review and conceptual re-examination of mental toughness: Implications for future researchers, Personality and Individual Differences, 45(7), Huntington, S. P. (1996). The clash of civilizations and the remaking of world order. New York: Simon and Schuster. Hynan, R. (2007). Evaluating parapsychological claims. In R. J. Sternberg, H. L. Roediger III, & D. F. Halpern (Eds.), Critical thinking in psychology. (pp ). New York: Cambridge University Press. Nelson, J. M. (2006). Missed opportunities in dialogue between psychology and religion, Journal of Psychology & Theology, 34(3), Sternberg, R. J., & Grigorenko, E. L. (2001). Unified psychology, American Psychologist, 56(12),

11 APA and APS Headings 11 Table SWPA Convention Topics Addictive Behavior / Substance Abuse Animal Learning / Comparative Clinical / Counseling / Consulting Cognition / Memory Community Psychology Computer Applications Crime / Delinquency Cross-Cultural Death Studies Depression / Suicide Developmental Educational Psychology Teaching of Psychology / Faculty Development Experimental (General) Family Gay and Lesbian Issues Health Psychology / Behavioral Medicine History and Philosophy Human Factors Studies Industrial/Organizational Measurement/Psychometrics/Quantitativ e/statistics Neuropsychology / Physiology / Neuroscience Personality Religion School Psychology Sensation/Perception Sexual Behavior / Function Social Psychology Sports Psychology Stress

12 APA and APS Headings 12 Table 1.2 Pre-1998 SWPA Convention Topics 1. animal learning/pharmacology/physiology 2. behavioral medicine/health 3. clinical/counseling/community 4. cross cultural/ethnic/minority 5. developmental 6. educational 7. history/theory 8. I/O 9. language 10. evaluation/measurement/testing 11. memory/cognition 12. neuropsychology 13. personality 14. sensation/perception 15. sex/sex roles 16. social 17. substance abuse 18. teaching 19. other

13 APA and APS Headings 13 Table 1.3 APA s List of Psychological Topics (Alphabetical, Top-level only) 1 Addictive Behavior 2. Aging 3 AIDS 4 Art/Music/Literature 5 Behavior Analysis 6 Behavioral Neuroscience 7 Child Abuse 8 Clinical/Counseling/Consulting 9 Cognition 10 Community 11 Comparative 12 Computer Applications 13 Creativity 14 Crime/Delinquency 15 Cross Cultural 16 Death Studies 17 Depression/Suicide 18 Developmental 19 Disabilities 20 Disasters/Crisis 21 Education 22 Emotion 23 Environment 24 Ethics 25 Ethnic Minority Studies 26 Ethnic Studies 27 Exercise Behavior 28 Experimental (General) 29 Family 30 Gay and Lesbian Issues 31 Health Psychology/Behavioral Medicine 32 History 33 Human Factors Studies 34 Hypnosis 35 Industrial/Organizational 36 Information Processing 37 Injury Prevention 38 International 39 Law 40 Learning 41 Measurement/Statistics/Methodology/ Computer 42 Media/Public Information 43 Men's Studies 44 Mental Retardation 45 Military 46 Motivation 47 Neuropsychology 48 Peace 49 Personality 50 Pharmacology

14 APA and APS Headings Philosophy 52 Political 53 Population 54 Prevention 55 Psycholinguistics 56 Psychology Policy Issues 57 Psychophysiology 58 Rehabilitation 59 Religion 60 Rural61 School 62 Sensation/Perception 63 Sexual Behavior/Functioning 64 Social 65 Sports 66 Stress 67 Substance Abuse 68 Teaching of Psychology 69 Violence/Aggression 70 Women's Studies 71 Work/Employment/Careers

15 APA and APS Headings 15 Table 1.4 APS Convention Topics List (Alphabetical) Adolescent Adult Advertising Aging Animal Behavior and Learning Applied Experimental Assessment Attention Attitude/Attitude Change Behavior Analysis Behavior Genetics Categorization Child Cognitive Neuroscience Communication Systems Community Comparative Conflict Resolution Program Evaluation Psychometrics Psychopathology Psychopathology Psychotherapy Research Public Policy Quantitative Consumer Counseling Couples Criminal Justice Cross-Cultural or Ethnic Disabilities Education Emotion Engineering/Human Factors/Ergonomics Epidemiology Evaluation Exercise Families Forensic Gender Issues/Sex Roles Health History of Psychology Relationships Religion School Selection and Training Self Sensation and Perception Human Learning and Memory Human Resources Infant Intelligence Judgment and Decision Making Language Lifespan Measurement Media Military Motivation Neuropsychology Organizational Change and Development Other Perception Performance Population Prevention Sexuality/Sexual Behavior Social Cognition Social Groups Social Interpersonal Relationships Social Neuroscience

16 APA and APS Headings 16 Sport Substance Abuse Testing

17 APA and APS Headings 17 Table 1.5 Common Topics APA and APS Aging Behavior Analysis Clinical/Counseling/Consulting Community Comparative & Animal Learning Conflict Resolution Crime & Delinquency Cross-Cultural/Ethnic Disabilities Education Emotion Exercise Family Forensic Gender Issues & Sex Roles Measurement/Statistics/Methodology/Co mputer Media Military Motivation Neuropsychology Population Prevention Public Policy Religion Sensation & Perception Sexuality & Sexual Behavior Social Sport Substance Abuse Health History Human Experimental Human Factors Human Resources Intelligence Industrial/Organizational Language Learning and Memory Lifespan

18 Table 1.6 PsycINFO ClassificationCodes APA and APS Headings 18